Huángtíng nèiwài yùjǐng jīng jiě 黃庭內外玉景經解
Explanations of the Jade-Landscape Scripture of the Yellow Court, Inner and Outer by 蔣慎修
About the work
A fragmentary Táng philosophical commentary on both the Huángtíng nèijǐng (KR5b0015) and the Huángtíng wàijǐng (KR5b0016) by Jiǎng Shènxiū 蔣慎修, styled at the head of the text “Cháo sàn dàfū cì fēi yú dài chén Jiǎng Shènxiū shàngjìn” 朝散大夫賜緋魚袋臣蔣慎修上進 — suggesting that the text was presented to the throne.
Prefaces
No preface survives in the source (the text is a fragment). The opening rubric identifies the author by his official titles (cháo sàn dàfū 朝散大夫 — “grand master for closing court” — and the purple-fish-bag privilege) and records the dedication of the work to the emperor.
Abstract
Dated to the Táng by Schipper (Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 1: 353, DZ 403). The received text is only a fragment of the original work, which the Tōngzhì 通志 “Yìwén lüè” 藝文略 5.5b lists in ten juàn (VDL 147). Jiǎng Shènxiū is not otherwise attested in the historical record, but his title — grand master for closing court, with the purple-fish-bag privilege — indicates the rank of a Táng court Daoist. The commentary is detailed and markedly philosophical in orientation, drawing on classical Daoist and Xuánxué 玄學 sources rather than, as in the Bái Lǚzhōng commentary (DZ 402, KR5b0086), on the primary Shàngqīng / Língbǎo ritual corpus.
Jiǎng’s method: short gloss-notes on each couplet of the root-text (“Shénréndàoshì fēi yǒu shén, jījīng lěiqì nǎi chéng zhēn 仙人道士非有神積精累氣乃成真 — ‘Immortals and Daoists are not divine by nature; only by accumulating essence and qì do they attain perfection’ — gloss: ‘shén is without place, zhēn has substance; being-without-place is what the Dào of immortality cannot possess, having-substance is what can be accumulated to become’”). The commentary thus reads the body-pantheon tradition through an essentially philosophical lens, attending to the metaphysical problem of divine constitution rather than to the ritual-meditative procedures central in Bái Lǚzhōng’s exposition.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:353 (DZ 403).